'I couldn't ask fairer than that. Good-bye, dear.'
Sally mused a moment alone, then said earnestly, 'I love him in spite of his name!' and went about her affairs with a light heart.
CHAPTER XXV.
Hawkins went straight to the telegraph office and disburdened his conscience. He said to himself, 'She's not going to give this galvanized cadaver up, that's plain. Wild horses can't pull her away from him. I've done my share; it's for Sellers to take an innings, now.' So he sent this message to New York:
'Come back. Hire special train. She's going to marry the materializee.'
Meantime a note came to Rossmore Towers to say that the Earl of Rossmore had just arrived from England, and would do himself the pleasure of calling in the evening. Sally said to herself, 'It is a pity he didn't stop in New York; but it's no matter; he can go up to-morrow and see my father. He has come over here to tomahawk papa, very likely—or buy out his claim. This thing would have excited me, a while back; but it has only one interest for me now, and only one value. I can say to—to—Spine, Spiny, Spinal—I don't like any form of that name!—I can say to him to-morrow, 'Don't try to keep it up any more, or I shall have to tell you whom I have been talking with last night, and then you will be embarrassed.''
Tracy couldn't know he was to be invited for the morrow, or he might have waited. As it was, he was too miserable to wait any longer; for his last hope—a letter—had failed him. It was fully due to-day; it had not come. Had his father really flung him away? It looked so. It was not like his father, but it surely looked so. His father was a rather tough nut, in truth, but had never been so with his son—still, this implacable silence had a calamitous look. Anyway, Tracy would go to the Towers and —then what? He didn't know; his head was tired out with thinking—he wouldn't think about what he must do or say—let it all take care of itself. So that he saw Sally once more, he would be satisfied, happen what might; he wouldn't care.
He hardly knew how he got to the Towers, or when. He knew and cared for only one thing—he was alone with Sally. She was kind, she was gentle, there was moisture in her eyes, and a yearning something in her face and manner which she could not wholly hide—but she kept her distance. They talked. Bye and bye she said—watching his downcast countenance out of the corner of her eye—
'It's so lonesome—with papa and mamma gone. I try to read, but I can't seem to get interested in any book. I try the newspapers, but they do put such rubbish in them. You take up a paper and start to read something you thinks interesting, and it goes on and on and on about how somebody—well, Dr. Snodgrass, for instance—'
Not a movement from Tracy, not the quiver of a muscle. Sally was amazed —what command of himself he must have! Being disconcerted, she paused so long that Tracy presently looked up wearily and said:
'Well?'
'Oh, I thought you were not listening. Yes, it goes on and on about this Doctor Snodgrass, till you are so tired, and then about his younger son—the favorite son—Zylobalsamum Snodgrass—'
Not a sign from Tracy, whose head was drooping again. What supernatural self-possession! Sally fixed her eye on him and began again, resolved to blast him out of his serenity this time if she knew how to apply the dynamite that is concealed in certain forms of words when those words are properly loaded with unexpected meanings.
'And next it goes on and on and on about the eldest son—not the favorite, this one—and how he is neglected in his poor barren boyhood, and allowed to grow up unschooled, ignorant, coarse, vulgar, the comrade of the community's scum, and become in his completed manhood a rude, profane, dissipated ruffian—'
That head still drooped! Sally rose, moved softly and solemnly a step or two, and stood before Tracy—his head came slowly up, his meek eyes met her intense ones—then she finished with deep impressiveness—
'—named Spinal Meningitis Snodgrass!'
Tracy merely exhibited signs of increased fatigue. The girl was outraged by this iron indifference and callousness, and cried out—
'What are you made of?'
'I? Why?'
'Haven't you any sensitiveness? Don't these things touch any poor remnant of delicate feeling in you?'
'N—no,' he said wonderingly, 'they don't seem to. Why should they?'
'O, dear me, how can you look so innocent, and foolish, and good, and empty, and gentle, and all that, right in the hearing of such things as those! Look me in the eye—straight in the eye. There, now then, answer me without a flinch. Isn't Doctor Snodgrass your father, and isn't Zylobalsamum your brother,' [here Hawkins was about to enter the room, but changed his mind upon hearing these words, and elected for a walk down town, and so glided swiftly away], 'and isn't your name Spinal Meningitis, and isn't your father a doctor and an idiot, like all the family for generations, and doesn't he name all his children after poisons and pestilences and abnormal anatomical eccentricities of the human body? Answer me, some way or somehow—and quick. Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it and see me going mad before your face with suspense!'
'Oh, I wish I could do—do—I wish I could do something, anything that would give you peace again and make you happy; but I know of nothing—I know of no way. I have never heard of these awful people before.'
'What? Say it again!'
'I have never—never in my life till now.'
'Oh, you do look so honest when you say that! It must be true—surely you couldn't look that way, you wouldn't look that way if it were not true—would you?'
'I couldn't and wouldn't. It is true. Oh, let us end this suffering—take me back into your heart and confidence—'
'Wait—one more thing. Tell me you told that falsehood out of mere vanity and are sorry for it; that you're not expecting to ever wear the coronet of an earl—'
'Truly I am cured—cured this very day—I am not expecting it!'
'O, now you are mine! I've got you back in the beauty and glory of your unsmirched poverty and your honorable obscurity, and nobody shall ever take you from me again but the grave! And if—'
'De earl of Rossmore, fum Englan'!'
'My father!' The young man released the girl and hung his head.
The old gentleman stood surveying the couple—the one with a strongly complimentary right eye, the other with a mixed expression done with the left. This is difficult, and not often resorted to. Presently his face relaxed into a kind of constructive gentleness, and he said to his son:
'Don't you think you could embrace me, too?'
The young man did it with alacrity. 'Then you are the son of an earl, after all,' said Sally, reproachfully.
'Yes, I—'
'Then I won't have you!'
'O, but you know—'
'No, I will not. You've told me another fib.'
'She's right. Go away and leave us. I want to talk with her.'
Berkeley was obliged to go. But he did not go far. He remained on the premises. At midnight the conference between the old gentleman and the young girl was still going blithely on, but it presently drew to a close, and the former said:
'I came all the way over here to inspect you, my dear, with the general idea of breaking off this match if there were two fools of you, but as there's only one, you can have him if you'll take him.'
'Indeed I will, then! May I kiss you?'
'You may. Thank you. Now you shall have that privilege whenever you are good.'
Meantime Hawkins had long ago returned and slipped up into the laboratory. He was rather disconcerted to
